Detroit News photo illustration I Daniel Mears
Nikolai Nolan, 20, publishes a Weblog at www.fair- he’s been reading Weblogs to find links to news on vue.com. The University of Michigan sophomore says other Web sites and commentary from Weblog writers.
He calls himself Salam Pax and says he’s a 29-year-old architect living in Baghdad. Nobody seems to know his true name, and some wonder whether he’s a real person. But thousands have been reading his Web log on the Internet.
“Last night was very quiet in Baghdad,” he wrote on the third day of coalition strikes as bombers approached. “The streets are empty only bakeries are open and some grocery shops charging four times the normal prices.”
And later: “On BBC we are watching scenes of Iraqis surrendering. My youngest cousin was muttering ‘what shame’ to himself Yes, it is better for them to do that, but still, seeing them carrying that white flag makes something deep inside you cringe.”
Readers keep coming back to Pax because, after following his journal (http://dear_raed.blogspot.com), they have come to care about him.
Pax is one of a number of self-styled chroniclers who keep Weblogs — known on the Net as “blogs.” A blog can be written by one person or many, but the common denominator is their diary style, and the fact that when they’re updated (sometimes several times a day) the newest entries appear at the top. This gives blogs a feeling of being both personal and immediate.
It is impossible to say precisely how many active blogs are on the Net, but it’s probably hundreds of thousands, says Michael Garten berg, research director with Jupiter Research in New York.
Born in the geeky corners of the Internet in the late ‘90s, blogs are coming of age, becoming an integral part of the Internet landscape. That is especially true now, during wartime.
“Reporters have an unparalleled ability to gather information,” but blogs have the ability to convey unedited, raw personal dramas the war unfolds, says Diane, a New York blogger (http://gotham.realwomenonline.com) who has developed an e-mail friendship with Pax and is convinced he’s real. (Like many bloggers, she does not use her full name.)
“Nothing really beats this raw stuff of life: What does bread cost? Where did you go to get it?” says Diane, who supports the war.
“When the whole (war) thing started. it was like fireworks far away,” she says. But Pax’s blog has changed her perspective. “It’s strange to be in favor of a bombing campaign that could kill this guy”.
Personal stories are only part of the “blogosphere,” as some call the universe of Weblogs.
Sites such as Warblogs:cc (www.warblogs.cc) compile headlines from mainstream sources and blogs, pointing people pie to stories from sources such as CNN and The New York Times to Turkish newspaper Hurriyet and KurdishMedia.com. Warblogging.com (warblogging. corn), which posts links to news and commentary reports that it was getting up to 6,000 visitors a day before the war But when war began, it says, the site was registering tens of thousands of visitors, including some from the U.S. House of Representatives, the Department of Defense, the British House of Commons and the government of Syria.
“Most of the news I’ve read about the war has been from blog links,” says Weblogger Nikolai Nolan, a University of Michigan sophomore and founder of the “Bloggies,” an annual Weblog awards program.
He says he has found a popular community blog called MetaFilter (www.metafilter.com) useful. “I get the news from whatever’s linked, and I get opinions on it from the Meta Filter comments.”
Others are turning to blogs kept by war correspondents, such as CNN correspondent Kevin Sites and several BBC reporters.
War correspondent blogs add “a new wrinkle,” says Rebecca Blood, who, along with keeping her own Weblog, is author of “The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog,” which discusses the appeal of blogs and offers advice.
“The news media is picking up on what the Web loggers are saying and vice versa,” said Paul Grabowicz, a journalism instructor at the University of California-Berkeley. “It’s giving people away to, in effect, publish their own news.”